Meaghan's Tips for Taking Your Comprehensive or Qualifying Exams

In Meaghan's department, they're called comprehensive exams, or comps - in many others they're called qualifying exams or quals. These are mid-Ph.D. exams, and they are by far the most difficult and terrifying part of a Ph.D (except for trying to get a job after you're finished hahaha aaaaaaaaaaaaaah). Each department in each school does them differently, but essentially the gist is this: are you good enough to learn what you need to learn so that the department will ever feel confident in giving you a doctorate?

Love Letter to Zotero, and Other Helpful Graduation Tips

Meaghan recently completed her Ph.D. (FUCK YES SHE IS FREE SHE IS FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE) and Amy is working on her Masters, so we thought it was time to compile a list of things we are fantastically grateful for, even if these people/services/programs have no idea that we exist

Creepy Photos of White Dudes with Fossils

Amy spent lots of time going over the history of paleontology in Big Bend National Park as she worked there this summer as a paleo intern (more on that later). This mostly means she learned about all the old white dudes who found some giant pre-chicken bones out there a hundred years ago (blegh, dinosaurs). Occasionally the pictures of these old white dudes with fossils are not just irritatingly cliche but also incredibly, exceptionally creepy - which led to Amy frantically googling "old men with skeletons," which led to this blog post.

Who knew Nosferatu was a vampire AND a paleontologist!

Meaghan's New Career Goal: Sheep, Sheep, and More Sheep

So Meaghan just got married (more on that in a future post) to a lovely gentleman named Logan whose family owns a farm down in Roseburg, Oregon. And on that farm they have wine grapes and apple trees and coyotes and a surprising number of cougars, and most importantly... sheep.

SHEEP

Road Trip Sum-Up

A few months ago Meaghan and her fiance Logan went down to Texas to hang out and fossil
hunt with Amy. It was pretty great, and if Meaghan wasn't working real real hard on her dissertation and also job hunting, she'd totally have written about it before this moment. So we apologize for the 3 month delay, especially since she's now going to give a bunch of road-trip tips and the price of gas has started going back up so that kind of sucks for you.

Fieldwork never looked so fun